Science Nature Books

I homeschool and this is a good book for teaching K and 1st grade kids their "place" in the world. It starts with a girl mapping her room and extends all the way to her place on the globe. It is a really fun easy way to introduce geography/maps.

What a great book. Great pictures. After reading it we sat down and made a map of my 4 year old's room. If only it explained the difference between living out in the country (like on a farm) and living in a different country (like China or Australia). But I can't complain. We love it!

I homeschool and this is an excellent book for teaching elementary school kids their "place" on the map. It starts with a girl mapping her room and extends all the way to her place on the globe and back again. An excellent teaching tool for putting things in perspective! Not enough words to make this a bedtime book, but enough to cause interaction and learning.

I use this book in PS and Elem. settings to set up lesson plans related to maps and how they can be used. This book helps children to relate maps to their own environments.

My daughter is six years old, and it's tough to explain some of the more complex concepts like time and space. This series of books does a great job using colorful illustrations and text that's a lot easier to understand than anything I could come up with myself! Besides, I am a map and globe lover, so this book especially keeps our attention. I also recommend Sweeney's other books, including the one about Time.

Yeah, I dont mean to come across the wrong way but i do have a degree in philosophy and i honestly think this is one of the best books i have ever read. Even in light of Kant, Hume, Locke, (Descartes sucks), Aristotle etc... This book does NOT seem to create an original system of philosophical thinking, rather this book is a synthesis of all intellectual pursuits put together, Anthropology, psychology, neurology, philosophy, history, etc... His main thesis is determinism, which in my opinion will be the next revolution in the culture of mankind... Similar to the so called Darwinian Revolution... In a nutshell our brains, more than our environments or so called free will, control our actions...

I highly recommend this book...

I am a big fan of Steven Pinker, and this, in my opinion, is his master work. Beautifully written (as always), it is sweeping in its scope. It demolishes the idea that humans are infinitely malleable and have no fixed nature.

A friend lend me this book after a discussion. I am not impressed.

In "The Blank Slate", Pinker attacks the concept, giving the book its title, that we are born without any behavioral predispositions, and "The Noble Savage", that pure humans were all complete, moral beings. Although I agree with him that both of these are wrong, I think he is clearly attacking straw-men here. I don't know anybody who has given the topic any serious thought who would think that way. Pinker gives some examples of opposition to the idea that human behavior has a biological basis, but I think these trends are more fringe than he makes them seem. You will always get a segment of society opposed to any politically relevant scientific insight - look at evolution. There is no serious intellectual discussion anymore that behavior has partially a genetic basis.

But the main problem is that Pinker is at most half-educated when it comes to some of the subjects he writes about. He makes statements which are either plainly wrong or so overly simplistic that they are meaningless. He takes the fact that the cortical folds are relatively conserved across humans as an argument that our behavior is genetically imprinted. But really any type of "Blank Slate" hypothesis would still be consistent with a constant large-scale brain anatomy.
Another striking example (also noted by another reviewer) is his claim that "Bonobos are some of the most peaceful mammals known, chimpanzees some of the most aggressive. Chimps have sex for procreation, bonobos for recreation". First of all, that is simply not true - there are highly interesting, but certainly gradual differences between these apes, but none of them that radical. No chimp can match a lion in terms of aggression (both as a predator and as a practitioner of infanticide). Sexuality equally has a social role in chimps (and of course a reproductive role in bonobos).
Second, it is just not a scientific statement - I am not aware of any zoologist making a ranking of the most aggressive or peaceful animals, and these qualities can probably not be expressed in scalar values (and thus ranked) anyway. Pinker sounds like somebody who has talked at a party to someone who had read a book about chimps. The book is filled with such over-generalizations, exaggerations and mistakes. Especially neuroscience (my own field) is not Pinker's strength!

So, a rather sloppily argued book falsifying some opinions which had been falsified a long time ago. I am not sure what this is supposed to achieve? It might be that I am not the target audience for this book, but it is not the type of reading material I want to better myself as an intellectual. This is clearly not an original contribution to any scholarly debate, and not a well researched popular science book likely to convince anyone still believing that biology has nothing to do with human behavior either.

It is a great art to write science books interesting to the expert but understandable to the layman, readable and without jargon, but not dumbed down. Writers like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have mastered this art, Steven Pinker has not.

Stephen Pinker does an admirable job debunking the myth of the blank slate in this tome. Yes, what he says should be common sense by now. No, it is not.

There are many places in the book where Pinker's values and background become evident. However, these are a small price to pay for a great book.

So, what does Pinker do that's so great?

1) He takes his opponents seriously and mounts his case slowly, step by step, taking the reader along with him.
2) He illustrates that having a blank slate view of human nature is not morally righteous at all. (important for all those disposed to the moralistic fallacy)
3) He does not talk down to the reader. Contrary to another reviewer, this book is not overly simplistic. There are points here and there where debate is possible, but overall it is highly accurate.

When you are done with this book, you should have no doubt that genetics and evolution were and are very important in human life. Natural selection is the only theory which can explain human behavior- period.

On the more controversial side, Pinker devotes many pages explicating Judith Rich Harris' theory about child development. Her views are very contentious, but provocative. Her basic argument is that children are MORE influenced by peer group socialization than the parenting style they lived under. Harris reached this conclusion after studying the behavioral genetic evidence. In behavioral genetics, it is known that all measured traits are heritable. Further, after subtracting genetic influence, unshared environment accounts for most of the left over variation- not shared environment. This is perplexing to most because it suggests that most environmental influences on personality come from WITHIN families not BETWEEN them. In short, two adopted siblings are no more alike than two strangers on the street, even though they share the same environment. Wheras, two twins seperated at birth are no more different than two twins who grow up in the same household.
Pinker largely accepts Harris' theory, with slight reservations. D.C. Rowe presented a similar theory years earlier as well. The controversy still rages. It is a bit premature to pick sides. Pinker seems to, but he does tell the reader that Harris' theory is the minority view.

In the end, this book can be read with pleasure by anyone. It is especially usefull to cite as a reference when having vapid debates with soiciologists. Most of Pinker's statements should be truisms. Unfortunately, they are not; Fortunately, he took the time to synthesize the insurmountable evidence against blank-slaters!

Pinker argues in favor of evolutionary psychology in this book rather than a blank slate view of human nature (i.e., a view that claims that the mind is formed purely by sensory input with no innate characteristics). Although the arguments in the book mainly focus on the blank slate theory of the mind, Pinker also argues against both the noble savage and the ghost in the machine views; the first view claims that humans are corrupted by civilization (such that the pre-civilization communities lived in a sort of utopian setting) while the second view claims that human thought is controlled by something outside the mind (e.g., a soul). Pinker cites a number of studies in this book to support his thesis that the mind is not a blank slate but that it has some characteristics that cannot be explained by environment alone (many of the studies involve identical and fraternal twins where identical twins have identical DNA but fraternal twins have distinct DNA) and argues that human nature is heavily influenced by the evolutionary process from which the human species arose.

This is the first Pinker book that I have read and I found it very thought-provoking. Pinker is a gifted writer and made what I thought were compelling arguments against both strictly environmental and, to a lesser extent, strictly nativist theories of the mind (i.e., the views that human minds are influenced either entirely by nurture or entirely by nature). It took me a little while to get into this book simply because the idea that our minds are silly putty never has held much appeal for me; thus, I had little motivation to read arguments against a viewpoint that I did not subscribe to in the first place. However, Pinker brought up many familiar views in areas like children, violence and politics and tied these views back to underlying, fundamental assumptions of human nature to illustrate how the various theories of the mind have influenced many popular views in ways that are not always apparent, even to those who hold these views.

Pinker argues that our social views and attitudes, especially the most important ones involving ethical values, should not be made dependent on what may turn out to be a faulty view of human nature. For example, Pinker argues that a concern for human rights is important because a society full of inequality, abuse and torment is one that the majority of humanity would not desire to live in; the fact that we have the ability to empathize with our fellow humans and, in some sense, "feel their pain" creates an even greater moral imperative to work towards a reduction of suffering. Conversely, Pinker states: "It is a bad idea to say that discrimination is wrong only because the traits of all people are indistinguishable. It is a bad idea to say that violence and exploitation are wrong only because people are not naturally inclined to them. It is a bad idea to say that people are responsible for their actions only because the causes of those actions are mysterious. And it is a bad idea to say that our motives are meaningful in a personal sense only because they are inexplicable in a biological sense." I am inclined to agree with these sentiments and I would recommend this book to others who are interested in a discussion on human nature with an evolutionary bent.

This is a well-written, extremely accessible edition for lay beekeepers who want to get to know their creatures, and take first steps to caring for and cultivating the bees' magical harvest.
Great photos, helpful tips and concise essays on the art of apitherapy too.

I bought this book last month. I had hoped that it would be a complete guide for bee-keeping. It is not a complete guide but it is a complete introduction.

So, now I am looking for a bee-keeping guide with more detail. And I think that anyone who seriously wishes to pursue keeping bees will want additional resources beyond this book. As its title suggests, this work is just the "bare bones" of beekeeping and lacks the detail or depth that a beekeeper will need. Still, overall, I found this a good introduction and would recommend it to others starting up a backyard apiary hobby!

The Backyard Beekeeper: An Absolute Beginner's Guide ... gives the beginner an overall feel for what he can expect from bee-keeping, both the hard work and the fun.

This bee book is well worth having if you are bran-new to beekeeping. It has a little bit of everything needed to get going. Simplicity and clarity are it's hallmarks.It is not the book for an experienced large scale producer...that is a significantly different world. I love it and it is an excellent resource to start the photos are fantastic and very useful. A few more photos detailing the extracting process would have made it better. Since I am very nearsighted the very small print is no problem I just take off my glasses. I think the author is on the right track and I would advise him to produce a large-print edition with many more descriptive photos and drawings also additional recipes. But what is here, as is, is great. One shock...the low price for the book considering the quality of the book and it's photography I would have expected to pay ten dollars more so the reasonable cost was also very nice.

What a great book to get started on a new hobby. Simple but with details at the same time.

This was hard for me to put down, and appeared to cover all the things a beginning bee keeper should know and included recipes for using honey. It was well written and interesting. However, after reading it, I did decide not to try to keep bees in the city, as I don't want to create problems for my neighbors. I will wait til we have our homestead in the country.

The bee diseases were addressed in what appeared to me to be a conventional, western medical model. I am interested in learning if there are effective alternative 'holistic' approaches to managing bees, so have also purchased a book on natural bee keeping. I have heard that some natural bee keepers address some diseases by using paper towels soaked in coconut oil. I would like to learn how to produce our own honey without exposing my bees and family to chemicals.

Vicki

This is an incredibly poignant and painful book to read--in my case being read to by my husband, sometimes with his voice choking. We both missed the story when it was making the news and neither of us had heard of the book when it first came out. So for us, it read almost as a mystery adventure. I did go online just before we finished the book and learned that David (the subject of the book) tragically took his own life in 2004.

I offer the title of this review "As GOD made him" because this is a more acceptable term for my fellow Christians than "nature" (or Mother Nature) as is used in the actual title of the book. But I'm certainly not challenging the author on this point. Nor do I challenge the author on any of his points---an unusual stance for me to take.

I would highly recommend this book for everyone. It's truly a DAVID and GOLIATH tale, in this case a "freek" kid throwing his smooth little stones at the giant medical establishment. For fellow Christians who so often see matters of sex and gender in black and white absolutes, the book also has a profound message. We are WAY too judgmental on such issues.

This is a heart-wrenching book. All along the way, year after year, I kept pleading for someone--for anybody--to hear the cry of "Brenda" the boy who had been unsuccessfully refashioned as a girl. But no one really listens. To parents and counselors, this is a striking message to listen to the voice that is not always clearly articulated.

The book has been a New York TIMES bestseller, and I hope it keeps on selling. David, bless his soul, performed an incredible service to medicine and psychiatry and the general public.

This is a wonderfully written book and a fascinating look into the debate of nature versus nurture in the area of gender assignment. Intelligent and insightful, the author draws a compassionate portrait of a family who, faced with a decision in the wake of a tragedy, relies upon the advice of a well-respected doctor, which reliance turned out to be misplaced. The book details the aftermath of the family's fateful decision and the impact it was to have on them all.

In August 1965, Canadians Janet and Ron Reimer gave birth to identical twin boys, whom they named Brian and Bruce. When they were about eight months old, they arranged to have them circumcised due to a medical condition that caused them pain during urination. Circumcision was to remedy the problem. Little did they know that the circumcision for Bruce would be botched, resulting in the loss of his penis.

A plastic surgeon with whom the Reimers had consulted in connection with the catastrophe that had struck Bruce had spoken to a sex researcher who had recommended that they raise Bruce as a girl. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic had suggested that they ought to get a second opinion with regards to that suggestion. The parents then consulted with a doctor affiliated with John Hopkins Hospital, Dr. John Money, a renowned doctor in the area of gender transformation, who had been the driving force behind the then controversial surgical gender re-assignment procedure for which the hospital was becoming known.

In 1967, the distraught parents met with Dr. Money and shortly after, Bruce became Brenda and clinical castration followed. Thus, their child, who genetically and anatomically had been born a boy, was for all extent and purposes now deemed to be a girl. Brian was now on the other side of the gender divide of his identical twin brother, the twin formerly known as Bruce.

Moreover, Dr. Money now had a dream scientific experiment, because he had a set of twins for which the unafflicted twin could act as a control by which to measure the afflicted one. In 1972, Dr. Money disclosed his "twins case" to the medical world, giving a slanted version of the experiment that made it appear to be an unqualified success. Unfortunately, his analysis of the situation did not disclose the difficulties that Brenda was having and her seeming inability to adjust to being a girl.

Apparently, though Brenda had no idea as she was growing up that she had originally been born a boy, she never felt that she was a girl. Years of follow-up visits with Dr. Money for both twins proved to be unsettling for them, as Dr. Money employed somewhat bizarre methods and procedures. Moreover, as Brenda grew older, she would resist additional surgeries and initially resisted the hormone therapy that was introduced on the eve of puberty. Even when confronted with a totally rebellious Brenda, Dr. Money, however, remained in denial about the failure of his experiment. He would continue to tout his treatment of Brenda as an unqualified success.

It was not until March of 1980 that Brenda was finally informed by her father about what had happened to her years ago and what had been decided in light of the circumstances. It was a revelation that was to dramatically change Brenda's life. What followed was a repudiation of Dr. Money's assertions with respect to his treatment. The book details the changes that Brenda was to make in her life, changes that would find her living the life she was originally meant to lead. Brenda would now become David and live the life of a male. Unfortunately, happiness would continue to elude him.

This is a simply wonderful, intimate look at a family that survived a hideous tragedy. It also sympathetically and sensitively details the personal journey of one family through the labyrinthine differences in opinion surrounding the age old debate over nature versus nature. I would certainly assert that nature, and not nurture, controls. This is a very well thought out book on the issue, grounded in the tragic experience of one family. Bravo!

This is a really cute book about space. Fun and educational. My boys 5 & 6 love it as much as I do.

This is a great book but it's out of date. Pluto is no longer a planet. I would just skip that page but it's hard because there is also a mnemonic device that includes Pluto in it. They need to update this book with a second edition. Otherwise, it's a great book.

The concept of this learning book is fine and it is a good book to introduce young children to space. I read it to my 4 1/2-year-old granddaughter and she enjoyed it. However, about half of the poems could have been much better. They lacked proper poetic cadence. A few seemed very ordinary. The publisher surely should have asked the writer to improve them. The statement that the spinning Earth will never slow down is technically incorrect. That's a fine point, but it would have been easy to present the idea correctly.

Love this book!! It gives nonfiction science content in a Dr. Seuss format. Keeps the kids' interest while they learn science - excellent!

My son sees this book at his doctor's office and begged for his own copy. He's usually a truck guy, so I don't understand his attraction to this book, but he definitely strongly likes it. And, heck, there's no harm in him learning the names of planets and a bit about space! Great book.

Just what I was looking for, to help identify the trees on property we recently purchased. Now is great since the trees are leafing out, which will make the ID easier.

Lot's of pictures in the book. Not super user friendly, but still really good and informative.

An oldie but a goodie. Too bad it's not discounted. We're on our second copy. There isn't anything out there that is as complete. Audubon rules.

This is the companion volume to the western trees edition. Having been able to spend some time on the east coast for the first time since I was a boy, I found I could only identify a handful of species, so I bought this book to see what I could identify, being familiar mostly with the west coast.

The Audubon books main strengths are in combining excellent photos of the main parts of the tree, the flowers or cones, branches, and bark, to aid in identifying the tree. Curiously, the book doesn't include photos of the entire tree, but in the text section there are drawings next to the description. This is okay too, and an expert dendrologist can often simply ID a tree from its "stature type." With a little experience with the trees in your area, you'll soon be doing the same.

I've found the Audubon books on plant identification very helpful, but I have to say I have some formal training in botany, mainly in plant taxonomy, which is a big help. The only real sure way to ID a plant is by using the formal key, but in an area where the species are limited, which is usually the case with trees in temperate zones, a picture type book can often do the trick. Just be aware that there are many pitfalls in not using the actual botanical key. (If this were the Amazon rainforest, there can be 400 species of trees in a few acres, so this approach wouldn't work).

This book uses a leaf classification key mainly, and has 10 pages devoted to flowering plants and conifers at the beginning of the book to point to the the relevant section. From there you basically leaf through that section to ID the tree. For the flowering trees, color information is provided too.

The text descriptions are brief but well done, and includes information on range, ecology, height and diameter, size of cones, leaves, and flowers, color, and uses. Overall, it's another useful and informative guide from Audobon done in the style which many people are familiar with for naturalist use, or just your casual cursiosity seeker who wants to learn more about these important plants.

By the way, for some excellent and brief key books for the west coast, look for Glen Keator's little books, which are available at bookstores and also at the Strybing Auboretum in Golden Gate Park. Glen had a Ph.D. in taxonomic botany and was the trainer for the docents in the park, also, if I remember right, and I have fond memories of spending many hours hiking while using his books, which became an invaluable aid in my undergraduate and graduate botanical education.

This is a user-friendly guide to trees in the Eastern U.S.A. So far, I have found it to be an enjoyable item to put in my backpack for a day on the hiking trail or the park. The book is clearly organized, with sections for leaves, flowers/nuts, and a couple of other categories. It is a good size, and the illustrations are clear. This book will help you identify trees. However, it is not a textbook or a serious introduction to the study of trees - for that, you would need something else.

I admit, at first I could feel my eyeballs melting from the pedantic aura that radiated from the Economy of Nature. The text followed a simple, formulaic method of teaching: each chapter began with a generalization, usually relating chapter concepts to a current issue, before dissecting the topic from the easiest to most difficult concepts. The material was essentially mathematical based on the graphs and equations normally associated with ecology, and the section on population growth is particularly helpful if you're a bit rocky with incorporating all the rates to calculate the net growth.

It was boring, boring, boring, but it was concise and saved my arse on final exams. If you're taking intro bio, I would recommend this as supplementary reading. It's definitely not as wordy as the average bio textbook, but you'll learn loads more about ecology and the math involved isn't tricky. The formulas are explained well, so even if you find it challenging you'll get the hang of it in no time.

This is a decent textbook as an introduction to ecology. It contains alot of good information and integrates quite a bit of mathematics and graphs into the material being presented. However, I am convinced that ecology is not a real science.

For anyone interested in learning about mushrooms, this book is the mushroom bible for species in the United States. It's not really a book for beginners, because the information can be somewhat overwhelming, but if you want a positive ID on something you've found, there's no better resource to do it. Then again, Arora injects a dose of unexpected hilarity that a mushroom-hunter with any level of experience can appreciate.

This book is amazing, and is my husband's new found hobby book and is already well-read. It is extremely thick for being a mere paperback, and arrived damaged. My only complaint is that it seems to not be ready for the hard wear and tear these mycologists will surely be exuding. The book itself is even more than we hoped for, and is an amazing resource.

It's an excellent book, but could be perfect if it has color spore charts, one of the most important taxonomic features are spore color and Arora recognize this on his book, why let that out?

Superb field guide for the mushroom greenhorn and connoisseur alike. Great color photos with all sorts of information about the little guys that you could ever imagine. They also warn about which ones to stay away from - always a good thing. Even if you're not into them that much, it's still a great book to have around the house just in case you ever want to know what kind of mushrooms are growing in your neighborhood. This would be an excellent book for a classroom or a great gift for a kid who's into being outdoors. Boy & Girl Scouts and groups like that would find this book indispensable for outings and general knowledge.
*Note* There is also a pocket guide that I own that is great too, and much more easy to lug around than this compendium.

One of, if not thee, most comprehensive field guide for wild mushrooming ever published. Amazing work.

Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators, is a new and important contribution to conservation and ecology by William Stolzenburg (Bloomsbury, 2008)
The author looks at cases, both experimental and real-life, where the top predators have been wiped out, and looks at what happens next. It turns out that a lot of things happen, none of them good. One result is an explosion of "mesopredators" (the second-tier carnivores, ranging from coyotes to raccoons to feral domestic cats) which wreak havoc on ecosystems without the larger predators to compete with (and sometimes eat) them. Plants and prey animals have evolved for one type of ecosystem and are often helpless in an altered one. While his examples come from all over the world, it's the North American ones that will cause the most consternation to most readers. Who foresaw that killing the eastern wolves and cougars would result in a gigantic deep population explosion (far beyond the ability of hunters to keep up) that wrecked the habitats of many smaller creatures? Who knew that bringing in a new apex predator (whalers) and wiping out the northern Pacific great whales started a cascade that drove the former apex predator (killer whales) to decimate seal and sea otter populations in many areas, resulting in kelp forests being replaced by barren seafloor overrun with the urchins the otters used to keep down? There are many such examples, some almost despair-inducing. One of Stolzenburg's important points is that, ecologically, human hunters don't replace the predators: they hunt in specific seasons rather than all year round and pick off the largest animals instead of the weakest.
This book should be must reading for anyone involved in wildlife management or conservation biology including everyone in the FWS, EPA, or state wildlife agencies.


Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology

The quite carefully written review of papers published over the last 60 years (yes, some ideas take a long time to make it to the maintstream)really tells a compelling story of our most feared ompanions, the top predators. What struck me most is the fearful power of self-defined specialist, or special interest groups, such as the hunting community, the animal right advocates, the greens, who ferouciously defend their standpoint ("rats have a right to live even if they exterminate the last breeding pair of a ground nesting seabird", to name just one nice case). What appears to be logic usually is not,(remember the summers spent by all those students sitting on fire watch towers preventing fires that now are being set on purpose by rangers?) and special advocacy groups are really prone to fall into that pitfall. So this book is an enlighting call for seeing the full picture, in this case the benefit we could gain from having back the top predators.

Sheer genius... I cannot sing enough positive praises about "Where the Wild Things Were"... Truly an education in ecology... William Stolzenburg does a thorough job of presenting diverse viewpoints... All of the topics were fascinating... The author's writing is moving, powerful, and provocative... I could go on and on with superlatives...

I am extremely excited to introduce family and friends to "Where the Wild Things Were"... My hope is that this book will receive the vast exposure it so richly deserves...

I am an environmental idiot. I try to grasp the concepts behind global warming, extinction, habitat loss, and biodiversity and come up gasping for People Magazine. Will Stolzenburg is my oxygen mask. He writes in such a way that is gripping, visceral and imparts a deep and lasting knowledge of the issues we face in the biological world. I bought 20 copies of this book - it will be my Christmas present to everyone. I wish I could buy enough for the whole world. It's that good.

WTWTW is a book that is way past due. It addresses ecological issues every bit as important as the oil and water shortages that are constantly on the front pages.

In his book, Mr. Stolzenburg provides an in depth look at the ill considered impacts of mankinds elimination of major predators. This book should be required reading for all Wildlife, and National & State Forests & Parks decision makers. It is also a must for anyone desiring to have an understanding of why certain species (whitetail deer to name only one) seem to be taking over the earth.